Lost Puppy Syndrome
by Twilight L Xari
Summary: A little Wammy-era twoshot about what happens when Mello isn't around to wake Matt up. Vague humor ensues, though unfortunately I was unable to recruit absolute hilarity.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Okay, I really should be writing Resurgence and THAW, but... Danny was telling me about this guy who follows her around like a puppy, and I couldn't help but think I could make a really good oneshot out of that idea. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out quite like I planned - I planned it funnier, as always - but I still like it. I am also the slowest writer of oneshots I've ever heard of, since I spent over a week on this. Dess wrote two in the time it took me to think of what I was trying to do. Ah well.

There was no alarm clock in my room. This was because Mello woke up like clockwork the moment the sun rose, and he liked to throw random things, like chocolate wrappers, at my head until I woke up. However annoying that could get, it was still slightly less annoying than glowing numbers and loud beeping in my ear every morning.

As a rule, this arrangement worked fine and got me to breakfast at least on time, if not early. However, as any competent speaker of the English language will tell you, there is _always_ an exception to _every_ rule.

It was that exception to the rule that had me curled up in bed with the blanket over my head, eyes closed, searching for my missing goggles with one hand. I finally found them inside one of my slippers and pulled them on, then peeked out from under the blanket and looked across the room, slightly worried, since barring death or serious illness, Mello would _never_ sleep in.

Apparently he was neither sick nor dead (unless somebody moved the body), because he was gone. He just hadn't decided to wake me up for some reason.

"Thanks, Mello," I grumbled, rolling out of bed and yanking open a dresser drawer.

Honestly, what sort of idiot gets _upset_ by their roommate _not_ throwing things at them while they sleep?

While I got dressed, I glanced at the clock – 10:01. Great. Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. Oh well. He'd probably had somewhere he needed to be. If he wasn't back at it tomorrow I'd just dig the alarm clock from the depths of the closet.

I spent a few minutes searching for my Gameboy – it had vanished into the pile of junk that dominated the floor at the foot of my bed somehow – then put it in my pocket and headed out the door to find Mello. Shouldn't've been a hard job – he always left a trail of destruction in his wake.

After half an hour of aimless wandering, though, I still hadn't found any flames, debris, or crying orphans. Maybe Mello _was_ dead and somebody had hidden the body…

I was running through a list of potential places in the House that could have a corpse stashed in them when I tripped on something and very nearly went sprawling. Luckily, I managed to catch myself before I fell _flat_ on my face, though I still ended up on the floor.

"Are you alright?"

I pushed myself to my feet and glared halfheartedly at Near, who seemed to have been making some sort of building or tower or…something out of dice before I came along and fell over it. "Do you _have_ to build things right in the middle of the hall?" I asked. Usually I didn't mind Near – Mello's hatred covered both of us, as far as I was concerned – but when I tripped over his toys I tended to be a bit less kind.

Not that he cared. "My apologies. Perhaps if you'd been watching where you were going you wouldn't have tripped."

It was times like that when I could understand why Mello found him so infuriating. I always wondered if Near found Mello equally annoying.

Maybe it had been him! He wasn't big, but you didn't have to be big to poison someone. The only problem he would've had would have been finding a place to put the body, then he would've had to get it there, and I couldn't think of a way he could've gotten into our room without waking me up…

Crap, there went _that_ theory.

"Matt."

I blinked, realizing that he'd been talking to me the entire time I'd been thinking. "What?"

"I said, you resemble a small animal who's been separated from its mother."

I stared at him. "Why do you think _that_?"

He shrugged. "It was merely observing that you seem lost and undirected without Mello."

"I'm not lost and undirected, I'm distracted."

"There's a difference between?"

"Yes, to me." I started walking away. "Have fun rebuilding your…whatever that was."

When I'd first tripped over all the dice, Near had mentioned that he hadn't expected anyone to be going down that particular hallway. I had been too distracted by my crazy theory of Mello's murder to notice exactly _which_ hall I was wandering down.

However, when I found myself in front of the door to Roger's office, I realized that Near had had a very valid point about the lack of traffic.

I shrugged mentally and sat down next to the door. If Mello was off somewhere rigging explosives, chances were good he'd end up here before long.

I'd been playing videogames there for about five minutes when the door opened and Roger stepped out. He didn't see me at first, then stopped and stared at me. "Is there something I can help you with, Matt?"

I shook my head. "Nope."

He looked up and down the hall for signs of a trap, but the only other person in the vicinity was Near, who was rebuilding his tower of dice without a care in the world. "I see. If something happens to my office in my absence, I will know who to go looking for." With that _dire_ warning, he continued down the hall.

I don't know what possessed me then. Maybe it was my lack of common sense. Maybe it was the fact that Mello wasn't next to me to smack me in the head and ask me what the hell I was doing.

"Matt, why are you following me?"

Not having an answer to that particular question, I made one up. "Job shadowing." Where it came from, I didn't know, but it was an answer.

Roger looked at me like I'd grown another head. "Is there some reason behind your sudden interest in my career, Matt?"

I shook my head. "Just bored. You don't usually look bored, so I figured I'd give it a shot."

"…I suppose there's no harm in you job shadowing me for a bit, though why you want to, I cannot fathom." Neither of us was going to say that the chances of me being L were about as good as the chances of Roger becoming the Tetris champion of the House, hence job shadowing may actually have a point to it.

I wished I'd come up with a more reasonable reason for my idiocy, though. The idea of becoming Roger when I got older was rather repulsive.

"Actually, Matt, I'm glad you've decided to join me. You can help me supervise the art class."

Shit. What sort of hole had I managed to dig myself into?

Two hours later, I ran out of the art classroom like a bat out of hell. Small children should _not_ be allowed to have art supplies.

I was so busy making my escape from the multicolored disaster zone that I didn't see Mello until he was right in front of me. "There you are! Where have you _been_ all morning?"

Mello, of course, completely ignored my question. "Why the hell are you covered in paint?"

I glanced at my clothes, which were covered in enough paint that it looked like I'd rolled in a rainbow. "Idiot little kids in the art class were trying to paint on me."

"Why?"

"One of them decided that it was more fun to heckle me than paint and pretty soon they were sneaking up on me and painting on me. One of them actually tried to pass me off to Roger as, and I quote, 'A modern sculpture in living color.'"

Mello looked like he was just a hairsbreadth away from laughing like a maniac. "What the hell were you doing in the _art class_? With _little kids_?"

"I told Roger I was job shadowing him for some stupid reason, I don't know why, it was the first thing that popped into my head and I was really bored and there was nothing else to do and for some reason I decided to follow him around and he had to supervise the art class and those little kids are _idiots_!" I was forced to stop there, as I'd run out of air, although I still had a good deal left to say.

Unfortunately for the rest of my rant, Mello burst out laughing. I personally didn't see the humor in being painted on by small children for two hours, but that was just like Mello to laugh at someone else's pain and suffering.

"What is _wrong_ with you, you absolute moron?" he asked once he could breathe again. "Why would you follow _Roger_ around?"

"I was bored, and I couldn't find you, and I've already beaten the last game I got, so what else was there to do?"

"You're never out of things to do when I tell you to go do something useful," Mello pointed out.

Unfortunately, I had no argument for that. I reverted to my original question. "Where have you _been_ all morning anyway?"

"Out," he said, his tone telling me that I wouldn't get anything more out of him.

"Was there some reason you couldn't wake me up before you left?"

He gave me a _duh_ look. "Because I didn't want you following me."

…I wasn't finding a _duh_ in that. "Why?"

He smirked knowingly. "You'll remember in a few days." He started walking off. "I'm going to lunch, see ya."

"I'll remember – " I ran after him, confused. "How can I remember something that I never knew?"

"You'll remember that too."

Yeah. That helped.

When we got to lunch, the first person I ran into was Roger. He held something out to me with two fingers. "Matt," he said, looking pointedly at the whoopee cushion, "this is hardly up to your usual standard."

I had only just started to protest my innocence when my eyes fell on a certain someone lurking a few yards away, listening and smirking.

Dammit, Mello hated that sheep for a reason.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note. However, the prank with the food coloring is all mine, hehehe.

A/N: I originally intended for this to be a oneshot, but I realized belatedly that I really didn't explain myself very well in some respects. Also, someone called for vengeance, and I can never say no to a good prank.

* * *

"Hey, Mello, could you help me with something?"

The blond didn't even look up from his history book. "With what?"

I flopped down on the bed across from him. "I need to get back at Near for framing me."

That got his attention. He looked up from his book and a grin spread across his face. "Hell yes!"

Sometimes having a best friend bent on the destruction of a mostly innocent – if annoying – kid came in handy.

That was how we found ourselves in Near's room that night during dinner. "Remind me why I have sewing supplies in my pocket," I mumbled, looking around to make sure there was no sign of the sheep lurking.

"Because we're short-sheeting his bed," Mello said. "And I want to make sure it stays that way. Give me the thread and watch the door, make sure he doesn't come back while I'm doing this."

I forked over the needle and thread, then left the room again. If it had just been short-sheeting I wouldn't have asked for help, but there was another part of the plan, which involved a homemade whoopee cushion and food coloring. Mello and I had argued about what color to use – he wanted yellow – but he settled for green when I threatened to rig _his_ bed the next time he was out. I wanted to get payback from Near, not utterly humiliate him.

After five minutes of lurking outside the door (it may have been longer, but time does strange things when I'm playing games), Mello cautiously opened the door. I paused the game and nodded, and he slipped out the door, closing it carefully behind him. "He'll never know what hit him," he said, grinning nastily.

I grinned and nodded, turning my game back on and following him down the hall.

We were about to go through the doors to dinner when Mello stopped. "Of all the damn stupid things to do," he snarled.

I paused my game again and followed his gaze. "Huh? Oh." Someone had hung mistletoe above the dining room doors. "Never saw the point of that stuff." I stared at it for a minute, then something began to dawn on me. "It's Christmas in two days!"

Mello nodded, then grabbed my arm and dragged me through the doors. "If you're going to state the obvious, don't stand under the mistletoe, you imbecile. That's practically inviting someone to walk up and kiss you."

"Eew."

"Yeah."

_That _was when it hit me what I had somehow managed to forget. "I haven't done my Christmas shopping!"

Mello snorted. "Took you long enough to remember."

I stowed my game in my pocket and grabbed a plate. "You could've reminded me."

"It was more fun to watch you get confused," he said, grinning. "There's still tomorrow. You wouldn't have gone until then anyway."

He had a point there.

* * *

Roger didn't hunt us down until the next morning. Unfortunately, that meant that he came banging on our door at six in the morning. "Mello! Matt! I have something to discuss with you!"

"Shuddup," I muttered, not moving. Mello, however, got up and dropped my goggles on my head, then opened the door.

When I got my goggles on and rolled out of bed, Roger was standing in the open doorway, a very serious expression on his face. Mello was looking at him like the picture of innocence.

"Boys, this latest incident of sabotage – "

"Has crossed a serious line," I hissed under my breath along with him.

"I am putting you both on laundry duty for two weeks," he informed us. "If something like this happens again – "

"The consequences will become more serious," I muttered.

Putting us on laundry duty, however, wasn't his best idea ever. He got full marks on matching the punishment to the crime, but seeing the green-stained sheets and clothes made it all worth it. Even more satisfying was the fact that Near had been unable to get all the coloring out of his skin, which meant that every time he walked by, Mello smothered laughter, and I would occasionally hum _O Christmas Tree_, which would promptly send him into hysterics.

Revenge was so, so sweet.


End file.
